Officer=friendly?: What African American children think

Despite the long tradition in research and theory on the experience of race-related stress, as well as decades of civil rights history notable for charged relationships between persons of color and law enforcement, relatively little attention has been paid to the social cognition of police by African Americans, and to its developmental origins. This preliminary study looked at the general valence of reactions to police, as revealed through semi-structured story-telling and short self-report questionnaires completed by a sample of fifty-five African American children. The parents of the children also completed short self-report questionnaires detailing their attitudes toward police. Similar to their parents, African American children reported substantial negative attitudes toward police, regardless of socioeconomic status. Vicarious and direct contact with police, ethnic identity, and messages from parents, friends, and family influenced children\u27s attitudes, which in turn predicted negative emotions suggestive of psychological distress. Although both direct contact and socialization/vicarious contact predicted children\u27s attitudes, socialization variables accounted for more variance. Implications of these attitudes—and the ages at which they evidently develop—are discussed